Usage of shipping pallets made predominantly of corrugated paperboard material is widespread, primarily because of their low cost, recyclability, and cleanliness. Typically, such pallets employ longitudinally extending, transversely spaced stringers, which are made from folded pieces of corrugated paperboard, which include two outer stringers, and which may include a middle stringer. Such pallets also may employ decking sheets including upper sheets secured adhesively to the upper edges of the respective stringers and lower sheets secured adhesively to the lower edges of the respective stringers. The decking sheets may have outer flaps secured adhesively to the outer stringers.
Predominantly paperboard pallets employing stringers, upper sheets with outer flaps, and lower sheets with lower flaps, as noted above, are available commercially from Gate Pallet Systems, Inc. of Crown Point, Ind., under its PAYLOAD trademark.
Pallets of related interest are disclosed in Cahners U.S. Pat. No. 2,444,183, Fallert et al. U.S. Pat. No. 2,446,914, Achermann et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,434,435, and Childs U.S. Pat. No. 3,659,534.
A pallet of an improved design is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/119,726 filed Sep. 10, 1993, and assigned commonly herewith. As illustrated and described therein, an upper decking sheet is folded to form two outer stringers of the improved pallet, which also may have a lower decking sheet.
The pallet illustrated and described therein may be advantageously used in an application requiring a narrow pallet but employing a fork lift having widely spaced blades, which may need to enter the pallet longitudinally. Thus, if the pallet has a transverse dimension of about thirty inches and if each outer stringer has a transverse width of about one and one-half inches, fork lift blades spaced by nearly twenty-seven inches at their outer edges can enter the pallet longitudinally for lifting and moving the pallet without damaging the pallet.
This invention has resulted from efforts to provide an improved pallet that can be advantageously used in such an application.